Among the critical job skills I really need to work on in this department is this biggie: when to shut up and keep my head down. Because I lack this particular skill set, I have now wound up with a project that otherwise would have been distributed between five people. Worse, if I show any kind of aptitude at it, I may get sucked up the food chain into a frightening and unwieldy committee.

It’s a procedure manual. Nobody has any time for it, but the department really needs one. So, the shadowy cabal that seems to be trying to steer the process of writing it demanded that the directors draw numbers and be responsible for writing text on topics which corresponded to that number on an equally shadowy outline. My director got five topics…and somehow, in the process of attempting to look alert and agreeable, I got the job of writing on all five of them.

Notwithstanding that I have no idea what two of them are, the most difficult part of all of this is that there is no format for how the information is supposed to be organized (i.e. outlines? Paragraphs?) and there don’t seem to be any written sources of information on some of the topics anywhere.

Everybody on my team thanked me for taking on the job – weirdly, many of them hate to write and will go to great lengths to avoid letters. I tried to look tough and warned them that they’d have to submit to me interviewing them, but they seemed unconcerned.

The truth is, I’m glad to have something somewhat relevant to do. Maybe this happened because God knows that not having a concrete goal in front of me starts to mess up my mind over a long period of time.

Oh well. Down, down, down into the depths of foggy research….hopefully I’ll re-emerge in time for Christmas!